Storage racks have been used for many decades in which several wood cross bars (which are themselves supported on steel step ledge beams running lengthwise of the shelves) support shelving formed of particle board or plywood decking. Some users prefer to employ formed steel cross bars in place of wood cross bars to support the shelf decking, but such structures cost substantially more. For the relatively short spans involved, wood cross bars for supporting the decking are much more economical.
Although they have been in use a very long time, conventional storage racks utilizing wood cross bars have several disadvantages. One such storage rack has the advantage that both longitudinal edge portions of the rectangular shelving are fully supported on the steel step ledge beams on each side of the rack, so that a minimum number of cross bars is required to provide support across the lateral mid-portion of the shelf decking. However, in this type of storage rack the typical decking of 3/4" thickness uses up storage space because it extends above the step ledge beams on which it is supported. In addition, the raw decking edge is exposed, which from time to time may cause the user of the storage rack to get wood slivers in his hand or in the products being stored. Finally, the decking must be fastened down by fasteners such as nails driven into the wood cross bars.
In a variation of this conventional storage rack, the ends of the wood cross bars are notched to drop them down farther on the step ledge beams so that the decking thickness does not use up any storage space, there are no exposed sliver-carrying edges on the decking and, since the decking is contained by the rear wall of each step, no nails or other fasteners are required. In addition, the top of the step ledge beam on each side of the shelf is flush with the decking and this maintains the effective usable area of the shelf. However, since the shelf decking is ordinarily not flexible enough to bend down the required 1" or so to bring it into contact with the step of the steel step ledge beam, this variation provides no support for the longitudinal edge portions of the decking, which makes it necessary to employ more cross bars and therefore increases the cost. In addition, the notches in the two ends of each cross bar add to the cost of fabrication and reduce the strength of the structure.
If the last two disadvantages of this variation of the conventional deck were avoided by omitting the notches in the cross bars and making the steps in the steel step ledge beams deeper, this would require the beams themselves to be of deeper dimensions, and would thereby very substantially increase the materials cost for the storage rack.
The storage rack and end bracket of the present invention achieve all the advantages referred to that are achieved with the conventional storage racks with decking shelves supported as just described, and present none of the disadvantages involved in those conventional racks.